Doctor's Notes #1: Biotech, China-Africa & TCM Cocktails
A curated prescription of my best reads and listens on health and China.
Hello CHP readers,
📝 Welcome to the first installment of Doctor’s Notes, a new regular series from China Health Pulse where I share a curated list of my most interesting reads and listens.
I live and breathe health and China, which means I spend a lot amount of time sorting through good, bad and completely irrelevant stuff. Here, I’ll be sharing the best of what’s out there—so you don’t have to do the digging.
There’s been a lot to make sense of recently in the big world of health.
The West is still processing recent sweeping global aid cuts from the US, UK and beyond; and earlier this week, China just wrapped up its biggest political event of the year—the Two Sessions (I’ll be doing a deep dive in my next post!).
But it’s not all heavy stuff. There’s space for the unusual and unexpected too.
Here’s what caught my curiosity recently.
📰 Short Reads/Articles
It's Not Just AI: China's Medicines Are Surprising the World, Too - The Economist, 16 Feb 2025
China’s pharma and biotech industry is making huge strides in innovation.
👉 This Economist article is a solid reality check on where China’s drug development scene is headed. Gone are the days of low-cost generics dominating the story. Chinese biotech firms are now developing first-in-class drugs and making billion-dollar deals with global pharma.
Can China Fill the Void in Foreign Aid? - Yun Sun, Brookings Institute, 11 Mar 2025
As Western nations pull back, can China step up?
👉 This Brookings piece examines whether China can fill the gap left by significant cuts in US and UK foreign aid budgets. While China's aid programmes have grown, they often focus on infrastructure and loans rather than traditional humanitarian assistance. Given its own economic challenges, China may not prioritize expanding its aid to cover areas neglected by Western cuts. This is a hot topic right now, and this piece provides more nuanced points than others about the future landscape of global development assistance. I will be writing about this important topic in a future post.
China Ramps Up Investment in Africa to Build a Health Silk Road - Hannah Crowe, The Telegraph, 27 Dec 2024
Beijing wants to boost its influence on the continent by building local healthcare capacity.
👉 I was interviewed for this Telegraph article about what China’s motivations in Africa means for global health partnerships. It was written before the recent USAID and UK ODA cuts, but it complements the Brookings report above quite well, because it looks at how China is stepping up its investments in African health systems as part of a broader push under the “Health Silk Road” to deepen ties and grow influence on the continent. While China’s moves may not be purely philanthropic (or pure), it’s clear that its presence—whether in building hospitals and labs, or to locally produce vaccines and medicines, is shifting global power dynamics and reshaping how healthcare is delivered.
Why 'Catastrophic' Medical Bills Are Hurting China's Economy - Joe Leahy & Wenjie Ding, Financial Times, 26 Feb 2025
Medical debt isn’t just a personal crisis—it’s a macroeconomic issue for the country.
👉 This Financial Times article offers a sharp look at how healthcare costs are burdening rural Chinese families and why that matters for the economy. High out-of-pocket spending is pushing households to save more and spend less, dragging on domestic demand. A good entry point if you're interested in the links between health access, inequality and economic reform.
China’s Latest Health Trend? TCM Cocktails - Fan Yiying, SixthTone. 13 Mar 2025
Bars are are mixing ginseng with gin—and it’s raising eyebrows.
👉 This SixthTone piece is a great window into the quirky collisions between tradition and modernity. Young people are sipping cocktails infused with traditional Chinese medicine ingredients like deer antler and goji, sparking debates over safety and legality. It’s fun, yes—but it’s also a reminder that the ancient roots of TCM are evolving everywhere in modern China, including in its nightlife scene, and public health regulators are finding it hard to keep up. I’m very keen to explore TCM’s deeper role in China’s health system in a future post, and SixthTone is always a great resource for insightful yet brilliantly offbeat commentary on China’s society—I’ll definitely be sharing many more reads of theirs.
📚 Longer Reads/Books
Deep China: The Moral Life of the Person - Edited by Arthur Kleinman
A layered, intimate look at how Chinese people make sense of illness, care and personhood.
👉 Professor Kleinman is basically a living legend in the world of medical anthropology—and this is my favourite among his many works. It’s an anthology of essays co-written with seven Chinese scholars, and it powerfully explores how Chinese people navigate suffering, responsibility and healing, as the self vs the collective (whether that’s families, communities or society at large). I’ve returned to it many times, not just as a health researcher, but in trying to understand my own Chinese roots and how I and my family view health and sickness in similar and different ways. This is an essential recommendation from me.
Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food - by Fuchsia Dunlop
A deep dive into how food shapes health and culture in China.
👉 I thoroughly enjoyed this well-researched and deliciously written book on Chinese food—not just as cuisine, but as a rich philosophy of nourishment and healing. Dunlop captures how ingredients and eating habits are bound up in medical thinking, regional identity and long-held cultural beliefs. But she also doesn’t shy away from the health costs of change: as diets shift with urbanisation and globalisation, so too do the rates of chronic disease.
🎧 Listens
China’s Biotech Boom - The Big Take Podcast, Bloomberg – Hosted by Sarah Holder, with guest Tim Opler, 10 Mar 2025
👉 This brisk overview charts the rise of China’s biopharma industry—spotlighting Big Pharma deals, global investment, and a new generation of drugs developed in China. Guest Tim Opler paints a picture of a country pushing into medical innovation fast, sometimes ahead of its regulatory guardrails. To note that some of the framing here makes sweeping assumptions about how China’s health system operates - thanks to Jordan at ChinaTalk for flagging this to me! With that said, I still recommend the episode, but for a more grounded take, I suggest that you read my post first: “Five Myths About China’s Health System” before hitting play.
How Alzheimer's Disease Will Test China - Drum Tower Podcast, The Economist – Hosted by David Rennie & Alice Su, 7 May 2024
👉 The Drum Tower podcast rarely ventures into health, but when it does, it’s worth tuning in. This episode digs into China’s looming dementia crisis—and how an aging population, limited eldercare infrastructure and growing rates of Alzheimer’s are straining China’s system. Like Europe, Japan, and the US, China now faces one of the biggest shared burdens of our time: the rise of neurodegenerative and non-communicable diseases. This is a thoughtful and sobering listen.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this round-up—until next time!
I’ll keep sharing what I like, and I’d love to hear from you too.
China’s health landscape is vast, evolving, and full of stories worth exploring together, and I want to make this newsletter more than just a one-way dispatch.
Drop a comment, send a note and share what’s caught your eyes and ears this month.
Stay in touch,
Ruby
📝 This is a Doctor’s Notes post from China Health Pulse, the first in a new series where I share a curated prescription of my most interesting reads and listens out there right now on health and China—so you don’t have to do the digging.
Coming up:
Everyone’s been talking about the Two Sessions! As the dust begins to settle, my next post will be diving deep into China’s biggest political event of the year, and what it reveals for health.